Changes to Justice in Chester County' elusive to track

Judge Thomas Gavin, left, and Ned Shenton visit Courtroom Two to see the historic mural at the Chester County Justice Center in West Chester on Friday. Shenton’s father painted the mural in the old courthouse in 1956 and remembers seeing it there in the late 1990s. (Photo by Vinny Tennis/Daily Local News)

WEST CHESTER — Courtrooms are often the place where mysteries are solved — the “whodunits” of Perry Mason dramas, for example. The truth comes finally, dramatically to light as evidence is produced and memories are unearthed.

But not so the question of the composition of famed Chester County illustrator Edward’s Shenton’s mural “Justice in Chester County,” which had been commissioned for installation in a new annex for the county’s Orphan’s Court in 1956 and which was last year restored and removed to its current location in Courtroom Two of the county Justice Center.

At least not yet.

Senior Judge Thomas Gavin, at whose insistence the mural was rescued from possible demolition after the county sold the courthouse complex to a local developer, had noticed that several changes were made from the original demonstration painting that Shenton had submitted to a design committee and his eventual finished mural.

From one to another, a farmer loses a hatchet and gains a hay fork and scythe; a Indian’s hair becomes a Mohawk; an apple orchard grows out of nowhere; a church appears in the shadow of the Welsh mountains of western Chester County; and, most curiously, a covered bridge over the West Fork of the Brandywine Creek trades places with a stone bridge over the East Fork.

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On Friday, Gavin invited the artist’s son, Edward “Ned” Shenton, to view the mural in its new location and possibly help explain why the changes were made. Were they part of collaboration by members of the county committee chosen to oversee the mural’s completion — many of whom were artists themselves — or just artistic inspiration by Shenton when he painted the mural on the wall of what became Courtroom Five in the Historic Courthouse complex, Gavin asked?

Unfortunately, the younger Shenton, now in his 80s, could offer no help.

“I wish I knew,” Shenton said during his visit to Gavin’s courtroom. “I have no idea.”

Shenton said his father, a professional illustrator who worked with book publishers on novels like “The Yearling,” “Tender is the Night” and “The Green Hills of Africa” was not above using suggestions from others in his work. “I think if someone had a good reason he might have changed things,” Shenton told Gavin during a lively session dedicated to the “Justice” mural. “But how will we ever know?”

Gavin said county researchers had been able to unearth no contemporaneous documents noting the discussions about the final version of the mural. The Chester County Historical Society, he said, had mountains of information about Edward Shenton and his work, but missing were minutes of the committee’s meeting to discuss the project with him.

Ned Shenton was not surprised. “He kept so little and gave away so much,” he said of his father, who died in 1977. “That’s the way he was.”

The visit on Friday came about as Ned Shenton and his wife, Ellie, travelled from their home in Lexington, Mass., to joining with members of a literary fan club dedicated to the late author and columnist Gladys Taber, who published a series of novels known as the “Stillmeadow” series. The group assembles annually in places that have some connection to Taber. Shenton, it appears, had illustrated some of Taber’s books, likely at the behest of his wife, Barbara Webster, who was Taber’s close friend.

This weekend, the group and Ned Shenton toured spots in Chester County that connected to Taber’s work, including a tour of Edward Shenton’s studio at Sugarbridge Farm in East Bradford, where Ned Shenton had grown up and the “Justice” mural had taken shape in the artist’s studio in 1956.

Ned Shenton said he had been away at college when the mural was produced, and does not recall seeing it or hearing from his father about it. However, he said that he had viewed the mural in the mid-1990s on a visit to West Chester. He stopped in to see it at the invitation of retired Judge Lawrence Wood, in whose courtroom it stood.

Gavin has stated in the past that the mural is meant to connect the citizens of the county to their justice system, and the notion of interconnectedness was evident in the Shentons’ visit Friday.

Wood, it seems, is married to Mary “Renny” Parke Wood, who was a classmate of Ned Shenton’s in high school. The draft painting that Edward Shenton submitted to the county committee is now owned by West Chester businessman Peter Latta, who lives just down the road from Sugarbridge Farm, where the Shenton’s lived until 1966 and who attended the presentation on Friday. As well, the farm is now owned by attorney Thomas Schindler, who appears regularly in Gavin’s courtroom under the shadow of the mural created at his home to argue cases.

Gavin’s most burning question for Ned Shenton concerned the view of the Historic Courthouse in West Chester. Superimposed on its face is a depiction of the “scales of justice,” which are curiously depicted in the shape of a cross and surrounded by a glowing aura.

Was having this “shroud” surround the scales meant as a religious message, he asked the artist’s son? Again, Ned Shenton did not know; his father was “middle of the road” when it came to religion.

But a member of the Taber contingent offered her perspective, confirming Gavin’s suspicion. Alta B. Hoffman of Pocopson said she recognized several features of the mural, from the Birmingham Friends Meeting to the stacks of Lukens Steel. “We are a nation ‘under God,’” she opined. “I do believe that he (Shenton) would put the two together, justice under God.

“But that’s just my opinion,” she laughed. “I’ll have to go up there to talk to him about it,” pointing toward heaven.